Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-01-29
GUTTER GAZETTE LITERATURE.

The New Yerk Erening Post makes the
weakness of the defense of journals that
publish the reports of scandal trials and
other shameful and fetid-6lthy gutter mat
ter, perfectly clear, when it retorts that
Nobody reads such stuff for the purpose of
making himself better, and nobody is the better
of reading it. 1t is a sort of literature which
| used to be confined to books, which were ex-
penSiye because they were necessarily scarce
| ana hard to get at, being in every country I'M
der the ban of the police, of the clergy, of pa
rents and teachers. In our day. however, it has,
through the newspaper press, broken loose
from the old bounds, and goes to every house
along with the morning bread and milk, and is
bought and sold in the streets like matches or
cigars 1t reaches men, women and children in
our day Just as if it were mixed with the -four,
or butter. coffee, because the newspaper has
become an article of daily household necessity.
Every editor can at least once fill thousands of
homes with stuff which hundred years ago
had to be sought for with shame and fear, and
concealed when found, and of which nobody
acknowledged the possession but the old roues,
who made up libraries of what are called Lu-
dibriG.
The chief claim of the publishers of
otherwise decent journals, in excuse for
the publication of revolving and debasing
matter, is that the public demand such
literature But if that be true-which
cannot be shown-how can it justify the
conscience-feeling publisher in doing that
his very offensive attitude proves to be de-
moralizing and wrong? The newspaper
men who are convinced of the error of the
lilth policy are moving at the East and in
England to secure its abandonment by
common consent, and thus impose upon
the virtue of publishers a severe strain,
when the temptation to fatten the purse
offers. We agree with the Post that there
is very little to be hoped for from such an
effort. As our contemporary puts it:
The very qualities which fit a man for the
conduct of thriving two-cent paper make it
almost impossible for him to support unmoved
the spectacle of roaring trade cone by rival
in news which he might have had were he less
pure and philosophical All his training and
all his talents tend to unfit him for such an
ordeal and get every one who suppressed
filthy reports from high motives would be sub
jscted to it. For, besides every good editor who
is seeking the elevation of mankind, there
exists Il wicked editor, who takes wholly
humorous view of the elevation of mankind,
and does not care what becomes of the race as
long as his own dividends are good. Aud the
savage Joy Win Wflcn tile IatVeT Noulu ldtle
out the filth and rake the money into the till
would fill the gooi editors soul with bitterness,
and finally. in most cases, drag him down into
the pit.
This is an entirely correct view, and
leads us to the conclusion we regret our
contemporary fails to express, though it
probably entertains the belief, that the
only remedy to stop the washing of filthy
linen in public is to make it criminal.
Why not? If one exposes his person
before his neighbor's door, he is pounced
upon by the police and carried off to
prison. Yet that otIense is immeasurably
less beinous, because so revolving, than
to print columns of filth, moral
rottenness and exposure of disgusting
amour, marital inidelities and the arts of
procurement, "done up" in racy English,
and force the precious record upon the at
tention of the youth of the land the
wives, daughters and untouched sons of the
home-loving and deceney respecting citi-
zen.
Censorship of the press Yes, censor
ship; for that purpose, since liberty of
the pres" was never meant to imply Ii
cense to contaminate the fountains of So
ciety, and make every child in the land
foul with the touch OF moral leprosy, as
such literature will do for the generation
coming on, unless censorship to the ex-
tent indicated is set up.
1t is simply impossible to expect, and
thinking men fully realize If, the homes of
the country to give US virtuous, pure
minded, woman-respecting, oncoming gen
Grafton, if impure newspaper literature hes
free access to the fireside. No man is so
absurd as to think that he can put forbid
den books into the hands Of his sons and
daughters, and expect them not TO be
smeared with the pitch, any more than ex-
pect them TO dwell in malarial swamps
and not be affected by the deadly miasm.
Yet the forbidden books, from the vilest to
those Of most finished style and highest
literary excellence, could not prove 50